Berlin Fashion Week presents glamour and business
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For the first time a large number of renowned labels and designers presented their collections, starting with Hugo Boss to Joop!, Unrath & Strano, Strenesse, Kostas Murkudis all the way to the splendid closing show by Vivienne Westwood. Different from other fash-ion week is that Berlin not only presents high fashion and traditional brand designs for SS09, but a multitude of local trend labels including Sisi Wasabi, Penkov, Michalsky, Lala Berlin or Kilian Kerner. The organisers from the agency IMG in New York were equally proud of the large number of young designers for whom Berlin fashion week was an opportunity to introduce themselves to the professional international audience. Within the scope of the “New Generations Awards” presented by the department store Karstadt, four promising talents, i.e. e. Marcel Ostertag, Boessert/Schorn, Esther Perbandt and Blutgeschwister, showed their designs. Another highlight supporting young design was the Wedding District project entitled “Wedding Dress”. It was a large collection of young, avant-garde styles and everything was for sale on the spot.
This summer, more than 10,000 visitors registered for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. It was of great economic relevancy that the number of buyers significantly increased. This was also reflected in the number of visitors to the two fashion fairs Premium and Stark. For example, the number of visitors on the first day of the Premium fair at the triangular junction was hardly as high as this summer. On Thursday morning, before the first cat-walk show at Bebelplatz, the halls of Premium were packed. The new strategy of the trade fairs to open simultaneously with the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week appears to have paid off and is expected to be the success model for Berlin’s fashion week in the future. Until now, the fairs preferred to open after the end of the show part. Especially last winter, this resulted in empty halls, because the majority of the international fashion audience had already departed by that time. Although official figures from the fair haven’t been released, it was obvious that the combination of the fair and show program was a true step ahead and suits Berlin’s Fashion Week on a whole.
Until now, the fashion week in the capital city was frequently perceived as purely glamorous, without an economic background and ridiculed by many a competing location. However, the latest version of Fashion Week shows that under corresponding organisational circumstances, Berlin is definitely in the position of keeping up or even surpassing economic locations as Düsseldorf or Munich in the future.
Glamour and business, high fashion and avant-garde, top brands and young designers – it is the mixture that makes Berlin attractive and draws increasing numbers of trade visitors from all over the world. And the organisers hope to expand further. Next season Berlin Fashion Week is expected Mercedes-Benz fashion will even be bigger, better synchronised and more successful. Berlin appears to be on the right track in following up on its major fashion tradition of the past and in gradually reconquering its position among internationally competing locations. Hopefully, the good results of the past event can be cultivated further and the project is not doomed to fail because of vainness and narrow mindedness as has happened too often in the past.
Image: Unrath & Strano